Egypt May Be Bigger Concern Than Libya for White House

On Thursday, for a third straight day, protesters scuffled with police in Cairo.Credit
Moises Saman for The New York Times

WASHINGTON — For all the harrowing images of the deadly attack on the American mission in Benghazi, the Obama administration is grappling with the possibility that its far bigger long-term problem lies in Egypt, not Libya.

Hours before the attacks in Benghazi on Tuesday, the American Embassy in Cairo came under siege from protesters. While the violence there did not result in any American deaths, the tepid response from the Egyptian government to the assault gave officials in Washington — already troubled by the direction of President Mohamed Morsi’s new Islamist government — further cause for concern.

President Obama telephoned Mr. Morsi and the president of Libya’s National Assembly, the White House said early on Thursday, in calls that seemed different in tone, suggesting dissatisfaction with Cairo’s response as opposed to Tripoli’s.

To Mohammed Magarief, the leader of Libya’s National Assembly, Mr. Obama “expressed appreciation for the cooperation we have received from the Libyan government and people in responding to this outrageous attack,” the White House said in a statement.

To Mr. Morsi, there was no mention of appreciation. Instead, the White House said in a separate but parallel statement that Mr. Obama “underscored the importance of Egypt following through on its commitment to cooperate with the United States in securing U.S. diplomatic facilities and personnel.”

President Obama, speaking in the Rose Garden on Wednesday, pointedly noted that Libyan authorities had tried to help the American effort to protect diplomats in Benghazi. “This attack will not break the bonds between the United States and Libya,” Mr. Obama said. The Libyans “helped some of our diplomats find safety, and they carried Ambassador Stevens’s body to the hospital, where we tragically learned he had died,” he added, referring to the envoy J. Christopher Stevens.

The president found less reason to be pleased with Egypt, historically the second-largest recipient of American foreign aid after Israel, at $2 billion a year. Mr. Morsi issued only a mild rebuke of the rioters — and on Facebook — while his movement, the Muslim Brotherhood, has called for a second day of protests against the lurid anti-Muslim video that set off the riots. And though the Egyptian police coordinated with American officials, Mr. Morsi waited 24 hours before issuing his statement against the militants who stormed the embassy; Libyan authorities issued immediate, unequivocal statements of regret for the bloodshed in Benghazi.

On Thursday, Mr. Morsi said in a televised statement that while he supported peaceful protests, it was wrong to attack people or embassies, Reuters reported. “Expressing opinion, freedom to protest and announcing positions is guaranteed but without assaulting private or public property, diplomatic missions or embassies,” he said. Reuters also said that he condemned the ambassador’s killing.

Mr. Obama seemed to indicate that the American relationship with Egypt is evolving. “I don’t think that we would consider them an ally, but we don’t consider them an enemy,” he said in an interview with Telemundo that was broadcast Wednesday night on The Rachel Maddow Show on MSNBC. “I think it’s still a work in progress, but certainly in this situation, what we’re going to expect is that they are responsive to our insistence that our embassy is protected, our personnel is protected.”

For the United States, “politically the bigger issue is Egypt,” said Martin S. Indyk, a former United States ambassador to Israel. “On the one hand, you didn’t have Americans getting killed, but this was the fourth time an embassy was assaulted in Cairo with the Egyptian police doing precious little,” Mr. Indyk said. “And where was President Morsi’s condemnation of this?”

Photo

Egyptian soldiers at an entrance of the United States Embassy in Cairo on Wednesday, one day after it came under siege.Credit
Khaled Elfiqi/European Pressphoto Agency

Several foreign policy experts said they worried that Mr. Morsi was putting appeasement of his country’s Islamist population ahead of national security. That comes on top of other moves by his government, including restrictions on press freedom and squabbling with Israel over how to crack down on terrorists taking root in the Sinai Peninsula.

While the killing of Mr. Stevens is a “tragedy,” said Robert Malley, Middle East and North Africa program director at the International Crisis Group, “in the longer term, Libya mainly is a problem for Libyans.” What happens in Egypt, by contrast, from “popular attitudes toward the U.S., to its domestic economy, to relations between the Muslim Brotherhood and the army, to relations between Cairo and Jerusalem, to the situation in Sinai, will profoundly affect the region, and so will profoundly affect America’s posture in the region,” he said.

What makes Egypt’s uncertain course so vexing for the White House is that Mr. Obama, more than any other foreign leader, has sided again and again with the Arab street in Cairo, even when it meant going expressly against the wishes of traditional allies, including the Egyptian military, the Persian Gulf states and Israel.

As recently as June, Mr. Obama was calling on the Egyptian military to quickly hand over power to the democratically elected civilian government — a move that helped Mr. Morsi, whose movement has called for greater use of Islamic law, assume power. At the same time, the administration was chastising the military, which has for 30 years served as the bulwark of a crucial American strategic interest in the Middle East: the 1979 Camp David peace treaty between Egypt and Israel.

For anti-American unrest to erupt in Egypt after all that could reflect a deeper divergence of a once-staunch ally from the United States. Mr. Morsi’s belated reaction came after other actions that have troubled American officials, from his decision to attend a meeting of nonaligned countries in Tehran to his choice of China for one of his first overseas trips. Mr. Obama has pledged to forgive $1 billion in Egyptian debt.

“How does the president go to the Hill and say, ‘We need to forgive $1 billion in Egyptian debt?’ “ said Steven A. Cook, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. “The complication is that this is happening six weeks before the election. The things that the administration wants to do in Egypt have become a heavier lift.”

David Makovsky, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said: “There are some real serious questions about the direction of the Egyptian government. Some of this will be submerged because of the election, but it is likely to come back later.”

The violence in Libya and Egypt reinforces what has been true from the start of the Arab uprisings last year: These are homegrown popular movements over which the United States has at best limited influence.

The odds of success may be greater in Libya, some analysts said, since that country’s problems are rooted in a lack of effective governance and security problems with a heavily armed populace, rather than in a newly empowered movement with a long history of suspicion of the United States.

The killing of Mr. Stevens sets back American efforts to help Libya with its transition, officials said, but only because he was such a tireless figure in this work.

“Libya’s public is quite pro-American, so it might produce a backlash against those responsible,” said Dennis B. Ross, a former senior adviser on the Middle East in the White House.

In Egypt, by contrast, Mr. Ross said: “Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood continue to live according to their own reality. If they want to attract any amount of economic support and investment from the outside, they’re going to have to create an environment of security.”

Correction: September 15, 2012

An article on Thursday about diplomatic repercussions from attacks on the embassy in Egypt and the mission in Libya referred imprecisely to Egypt’s ranking among recipients of American foreign aid. While Egypt has usually ranked second, behind Israel, since the Camp David Accords in 1978, in recent years military assistance, reconstruction and other spending relating to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have moved those countries along with Pakistan into the top five recipients. Counting this war-related spending as foreign aid, Egypt now ranks fifth, not second.